Tuesday, August 23, 2005
a b-movie viewing brings reminders of pronunciation police.
that was pretty funny. i tried to take it seriously, but the laughs burst out anyway. i couldn't help keeping up a running commentary along the lines of the two moose in the comment track of "brother bear".
one thing i was having fun with is also a pet peeve of mine:
i think the confusion over pronunciation of "uranus" came from some early laziness. it was originally "yU-rAn'-us" (as in "yU-rAn'-E-um"), where caps indicate the long vowel sound, not the more recent "yur-A'-nus", which is where the problem started. the latest "yur'-uh-nus" is just silly, replacing one mispronunciation with some politically correct even wronger one. the movie uses "yur-ah'-nus". wikipedia:Uranus has a little discussion on this.
in any case, why did all this recent immaturity crop up over "anus" ? never had that problem growing up, no one ever even smirked, it never occurred to us. it's a fairly recent phenomena (i never heard the alternate pronunciation until the late 90's). friggin' regressive / repressive culture, is what it is. i wonder if it has anything to do with the coming to power of the prudish right-wingers ? and you know, it doesn't matter how you pronounce it, if i want to giggle over the sophomoric interpretation of the word, i can and will. and i will have a good time doing it.
so until we start fueling nuclear reactors with "yur'-uh-nee'-um", let's forget all this foolishness and go back to using "yU-rAn'-us", before i kick someone in "yur-A'-nus".